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Personally, I think it is simplicity rather than amount of downforce that matters.
I'd be interested to see where reduced downforce has been proven to give better racing (in F1).
From f1technical.net:
Peter Wright [..] made plot of downforce levels from 1965 to 2000 :
1968: 1000lbs@150mph - high wings
1976: 800lbs@150mph
1978: 2000lbs@150mph
1980: 3000lbs@150mph
1981: 2300lbs@150mph - skirts banned
1982: 2500lbs@150mph
1983: 2000lbs@150mph - flat bottom
1986: 2500lbs@150mph
1992: 3500lbs@150mph - peak downforce
1995: 1800lbs@150mph - stepped floor, smaller wings
2000: 2600lbs@150mph
For Tyrrell F1 cars (SAE paper from Ben Agathangelou and Mike Gascoyne) :
1989: 2200lbs@150mph
1990: 2300lbs@150mph
1991: 2450lbs@150mph
1992: 2750lbs@150mph
1993: 2450lbs@150mph
1994: 2350lbs@150mph
1995: 2050lbs@150mph
1996: 2350lbs@150mph
1997: 2500lbs@150mph
I'm wondering if there is a correlation between the peaks in '80 and '92 with a reduction in the quality of racing.
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